What's commonly called "Obamacare" is also known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but the full formal title is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a mouthful that makes it obvious why the shorter names are way more common … Continue reading
In case you didn't already read this news back in early February, tests conducted by the state of New York found that very few herbal supplements they tested contained any at all of what they claimed to contain. This brief … Continue reading
Dracula, who operates a resort hotel where monsters can vacation free from human persecution, invites his fellow famous monsters to the huge party he’s putting on for for his daughter Mavis’s 118th birthday. (Vampires must mature slowly, since she looks … Continue reading
Back in 1984 a young Tim Burton directed a highly stylized half-hour live-action short for Disney, featuring Shelley Duvall and a number of other recognizable character actors, about a young suburban boy named Victor Frankenstein whose brings his beloved dog … Continue reading
Norman is a kid with no close friends at school, but he does know a lot of dead people. Of course, neither his parents nor his older sister nor his schoolmates believe he can talk with the departed, but it … Continue reading
In the late 1990s a writing student named Jim Butcher was urged by his teacher (author Deborah Chester) to set aside the medieval fantasies he’d been working on and try something in a modern setting. As Butcher said in a … Continue reading
John Oliver once again tackles an important subject with intelligence and humor. This time the target is standardized testing, something kids are apparently now subjected to literally every few weeks. As he points out, in theory it makes a great … Continue reading
Jack Pearl is little remembered today, but in the early days of radio he was famous for playing Baron Munchausen, a character with a thick German accent who would recount ludicrous adventures he claimed to have had, responding to skepticism … Continue reading
I'm normally a fan of Hank and John Green's YouTube empire. Granted, their Mental Floss channel occasionally gets things wrong or at least wrong enough that one can reasonably complain about it, but rarely do they commit an error of … Continue reading
Something I just read pointed me to an interesting opinion piece by New York Times columnist David Brooks published in early February under the title "Building Better Secularists" (link). In it, Brooks favorably remarks on a book by Pitzer College … Continue reading